Blamestorming

re: Blamestorming

stuart — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 14:00:25 GMT

Hey Steve,

I read this story too, but you missed out a critical step which involved human error... Somebody at Bloomberg who scans the news headlines on various sites, saw the story on Google News and then posted it onto the Bloomberg wire which gets fed straight into the terminals of the Wall St traders. So when the traders saw the story, it was supposedly from a trusted source, and also removed from all previous context - so that's why they started bailing. So I'd say the 65% blame you gave investors would be split 50% to the clerk at Bloomberg that posted the story, and 15% to the traders. A quick phone call from any of the humans involved would have sorted it out pretty quick.

Cheers - Stuart.

re: Blamestorming

Patrick Ogenstad — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 15:15:23 GMT

I heard that the blame should go to you and your montize buddy Scott. However this was from a feed and the details were a but fuzzy. :)

re: Blamestorming

Mike — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 07:49:10 GMT

This kind of thing really makes you wonder how easy it would be to affect the US economy through running a serious of bogus stories to make investers react a certain way. I'm with you Steve...wouldn't you check the integrity of a story before acting on the information???

re: Blamestorming

ColonelBlinky — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 03:16:04 GMT

The good news is United did recover, although not back to the original share price, so they still have some work to do. It terms of what it has to do with security, I suppose it's a good example of integrity, all it takes is some incorrect information to make it to the destination without sufficient validation and there is a serious issue. Security is all about the human element as much as it's about the bits and bytes moving around near the speed of light. I don't think there should be any blame for what is seemly a simple but expensive mistake, it could have been a lot bigger, so better it happens now while the impact is manageable and considering the state of the global economy we did ok. The focus should be on process or self improvement, I believe finger pointing and blaming is often a waste energy, finding the moment in time that set off the sequence of events won’t change the past and in some cases won’t make the current situation any less painless but it can be used to alter the future hopefully for the better.